In passing through the hall of entrance, Paulina had noticed a man of striking and _farouche_ appearance,--hair black and matted, eyes keen and wild, and beaming with malicious cunning, who surveyed her as she passed with a mixed look of insolence and curiosity, that involuntarily made her shrink. He had been half reclining carelessly against the wall, when she first entered, but rose upright with a sudden motion as she passed him--not probably from any sentiment of respect, but under the first powerful impression of surprise on seeing a young woman of peculiarly splendid figure and impressive beauty, under circumstances so little according with what might be supposed her natural pretensions. The dignity of her deportment, and the numbers of her attendants, sufficiently proclaimed the luxurious accommodations which her habits might have taught her to expect; and she was now entering a dwelling which of late years had received few strangers of her sex, and probably none but those of the lowest rank. "Know your distance, fellow!" exclaimed one of the waiting-women, angrily, noticing his rude gaze and the effect upon her mistress. "Good faith, madam, I would that the distance between us were more; it was no prayers of mine, I promise you, that brought upon me a troop of horses to Waldenhausen, enough in one twelve hours to eat me out a margrave's ransom. Light thanks I reckon on from yagers; and the payments of dragoons will pass current for as little in the forest, as a lady's frown in Waldenhausen." "Churl!" said an officer of dragoons, "how know you that our payments are light? The emperor takes nothing without payment; surely not from such as you. But _à propos_ of ransoms, what now might be Holkerstein's ransom for a farmer's barns stuffed with a three years' crop?" "How mean you by that, captain? The crop's my own, and never was in worse hands than my own. God send it no worse luck to-day!" "Come, come, sir, you understand me better than that; nothing at Waldenhausen, I take it, is yours or any man's, unless by license from Holkerstein. And when I see so many goodly barns and garners, with their jolly charges of hay and corn, that would feed one of Holkerstein's garrisons through two sieges, I know what to think of him who has saved them scot-free. He that serves a robber must do it on a robber's terms. To such bargains there goes but one word, and that is the robber's. But, come, man, I am not thy judge. Only I would have my soldiers on their guard at one of Holkerstein's outposts. And thee, farmer, I would have to remember that an emperor's grace may yet stand thee instead, when a robber is past helping thee to a rope." The soldiers laughed, but took their officer's hint to watch the motions of a man, whose immunity from spoil, in circumstances so tempting to a military robber's cupidity, certainly argued some collusion with Holkerstein.